Monday, June 30, 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008
The Joy of Teaching
When people find out I teach 4 and 5 year olds they wonder how I do it. For starters, they have the attention span equivalent to a goldfish, there is the constant need to tell on others and whine when they are not first in line, some still don't have the capability to hold pencils, scissors, or go to the bathroom before having an accident, and they appear to always have energy, except for those rare moments when they are tired and then they just become grumpy. However, the reality is that teaching the little ones is a blast. Never in my life would I have thought I would enjoy it, but I do. Their constant energy and excitement over the little things is contagious. They really do say the most random things and the most inappropriate moments, but it is at these times when you can't help but laugh. No matter how mad you get, they always forgive and nothing is better than a hug from a five year old to brighten your day. One of the best things though of teaching this age group is the amount they learn in a short period of time. When they started my class most could barely write their name and they had not even started writing, but now my students can read short books and write sentences (spelling may not be perfect though) among many other things. Being that this was the last week of school, I got presents and cards from many of my students. The best came from a letter written by one of the parents in my class, and this one letter made all the hard work and struggles from this year worth while. Knowing that I made a difference in their child's life is what makes teaching so rewarding. How many other jobs give you this satisfaction? Anyways, here is what was written:
"Dear Sarah:
We don't know how many kids you have teach. We don't know how many kids you are going to teach. But we know you will be the special on in Sabrina's memory. Because of you can she be able to read. Because of you can she make her stories."
It's reminders like these that make going to work worthwhile and rewarding. Getting summers off too is also a plus, but who's counting? Oh, and the kids are cute too (just look at the pictures!)
No More Pencils, No More Books, No More Teacher's Dirty Looks
School's out for summer! School's out forever! Maybe you caught onto the song by Alice Cooper, but it is true, school is out for summer. Yesterday was the last day and it truthfully has not sunk in. I did not cry, but I was sad to say goodbye to a couple of my little ones. I was truly blessed by a great group of students and parents, and I feel lucky to have had a good year. I was also blessed by having so many fun friends to teach with. Being the extrovert that I am, it would not ave been as good of a year had I not been surrounded by my friends while teaching. They helped to keep me sane both in and out of school and have given me many fun memories of random stuff that we did throughout the year. To all my friends at BISS, thanks for making this year so great.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
The time has come...
The last week of school is now approaching and I am not sure if I should be happy or sad. The halls of BISS are filled with teachers who have looks of exhaustion written all over them and the students either have the same look or are completely stir crazy and wound up. However, I am happy that I still have energy, although my lesson plans are pretty much nonexistent at this point. One thing is for certain, I have loved teaching this year. Despite the craziness of some of the events that have occurred in my classroom, I can honestly say that I have really enjoyed this past year. My students are awesome and keep me laughing and on my toes. Never in my life plans did I ever think that I would be teaching 4 and 5 year olds, but here I am. Their innocence and joy for life is truly contagious and has taught me so much.
As my last week of school approached so does my last month of living in China. Once again, I am not sure if I should be happy or sad. The reality is that I have really enjoyed the experience of living in China. Sure I have had those "I hate China" moments where the spitting and peeing in streets and cutting in line and everything else becomes overwhelming and I just want to get the heck out of here, but soon those moments fade and I really like it again. One thing is for certain, I have had an amazing two years and words cannot give justice to all that I have experienced and learned. Never would I have thought that two of my years would be spent living in China, but I am glad that they have. I think that everyone should live abroad, at least for awhile. The people that I have met and the things I have experienced have broaden my perspective on the world.
Living in the States made me a bit sheltered to the world around me and I never realized how much event in America affect everyone else. Sure I had heard it before and people talk about how much of an influence the US has, but until these past two years I never really believed it. It has been interesting to see how much Europeans care about the 2008 Election and how many people who are not American know so much about Obama, Clinton, and McCain. Seeing how much they care about the Election really has made me want to know more too.
It has also been a very interesting and exciting time to be living in China. This past year so many events have occurred (the Free Tibet movement, the Olympics, the Sichuan Earthquake...) and having to view these events within China has been eye-opening. I am curious to see how the rest of the world is viewing China right and how the news portrays these events. I am also starting to see many positive changes in China that are making more optimistic about its future. China has just started a policy in which at the grocery stores you have to buy your own plastic bags in order to encourage people to recycle them and/or buy reusable bags. This will create a huge positive change and reduce the amount of plastic waste in China. There are also small changes that are occurring in the people; at crosswalks cars are now starting to stop for pedestrians, people are not pushing as much in lines, there are more "common courtesy" signs up to encourage people not to spit and throw trash. While these are all small steps, they are a start to a bettering of China.
On July 27th I will be leaving Shanghai. I do not know if it will be for good or if I will return, but I will not be in China for the Olympics. Beijing has undergone a lot of preparation for the Olympics and I just hope that all their work will pay off. Part of me is not sure the world is quite ready for China, but all will be determined during the Olympics. Sure Beijing is not like the rest of "Real China" (and Shanghai is not either) but it is a glimpse into what China can be like. I know that it will be cool to watch it all from TV and know the places they are talking about and to see how things are viewed from abroad.
And so I embark on the last month of my time in China. Half of it will be spent here in Shanghai and the other half will be spent exploring Yunnan with my cousin. I do know for certain that I will miss China and that I can honestly say that I am glad I came.
As my last week of school approached so does my last month of living in China. Once again, I am not sure if I should be happy or sad. The reality is that I have really enjoyed the experience of living in China. Sure I have had those "I hate China" moments where the spitting and peeing in streets and cutting in line and everything else becomes overwhelming and I just want to get the heck out of here, but soon those moments fade and I really like it again. One thing is for certain, I have had an amazing two years and words cannot give justice to all that I have experienced and learned. Never would I have thought that two of my years would be spent living in China, but I am glad that they have. I think that everyone should live abroad, at least for awhile. The people that I have met and the things I have experienced have broaden my perspective on the world.
Living in the States made me a bit sheltered to the world around me and I never realized how much event in America affect everyone else. Sure I had heard it before and people talk about how much of an influence the US has, but until these past two years I never really believed it. It has been interesting to see how much Europeans care about the 2008 Election and how many people who are not American know so much about Obama, Clinton, and McCain. Seeing how much they care about the Election really has made me want to know more too.
It has also been a very interesting and exciting time to be living in China. This past year so many events have occurred (the Free Tibet movement, the Olympics, the Sichuan Earthquake...) and having to view these events within China has been eye-opening. I am curious to see how the rest of the world is viewing China right and how the news portrays these events. I am also starting to see many positive changes in China that are making more optimistic about its future. China has just started a policy in which at the grocery stores you have to buy your own plastic bags in order to encourage people to recycle them and/or buy reusable bags. This will create a huge positive change and reduce the amount of plastic waste in China. There are also small changes that are occurring in the people; at crosswalks cars are now starting to stop for pedestrians, people are not pushing as much in lines, there are more "common courtesy" signs up to encourage people not to spit and throw trash. While these are all small steps, they are a start to a bettering of China.
On July 27th I will be leaving Shanghai. I do not know if it will be for good or if I will return, but I will not be in China for the Olympics. Beijing has undergone a lot of preparation for the Olympics and I just hope that all their work will pay off. Part of me is not sure the world is quite ready for China, but all will be determined during the Olympics. Sure Beijing is not like the rest of "Real China" (and Shanghai is not either) but it is a glimpse into what China can be like. I know that it will be cool to watch it all from TV and know the places they are talking about and to see how things are viewed from abroad.
And so I embark on the last month of my time in China. Half of it will be spent here in Shanghai and the other half will be spent exploring Yunnan with my cousin. I do know for certain that I will miss China and that I can honestly say that I am glad I came.
Monday, June 09, 2008
When I grow up...
Today I decided what I want to be when I grow up... a writer. However, I realize my inability to write well, and so I am left having to copy another person's work. Today I started to read a book called China Road. It is a book written by a British gentleman who records his travels from Shanghai to Kazakhstan in hopes to learn more about China's future from regular people. Anyways, the first part is about four days he spent in Shanghai. I really enjoyed this part of the book and the descriptions he had about Shanghai and life within Shanghai. For someone who has never been to Shanghai, or rather has only been to Shanghai (and nowhere else in China), he might be blinded by the amazing fast pace of life and sky scrapers and bright lights, but there actually is a lot of history in Shanghai. And so here are some cool descriptions of Shanghai that I am stealing from Rob Gifford:
There is an intangible feel in Shanghai, an urgency, a hope and optimism that hangs in the air all around you from the minute you arrive. People are pushing forward, with their feet and in their heads, building a future, building a country, moving towards some distant, unseen goal.
New York City makes a good comparison. Beijing is Washington, DC, a capital city, too obsessed with politics to be at the forefront of commerce. Shanghai is Manhattan, although in many ways it is Manhattan in about 1910- a boomtown with immigrants flooding in. There are roughly 13 million people in Shanghai (New York in 1910 had about 5 million). As in New York a hundred years ago, many of these people have just arrived from somewhere else.
There is no Statue of Liberty to welcome them here, but as I stand looking out across the corrugated river to the Elysian Fields of Pudong, it seems to me there should be. Or at least a Statue of Opportunity...
One shiny new office tower on the other side of the river has become a huge TV screen, with advertisements and government propaganda alternately lighting up the entire side of the building, one message replaces five seconds later by another.
Welcome to Shanghai. Tomorrow will be even more beautiful.
1,746 more days until the Shanghai World Expo.
Sexual equality is a basic policy of our country.
Eat Dove chocolate.
First of all, yes, there is a consumer boom, but the majority of people have no access to it. If in the US you need money to get power, in China you need power to get money. China's prosperity today is just a patina of wealth, accessible mainly to the corrupt and the very fortunate at the top, which disguises a seething mass of urban social problems, such as unemployment, crime and outdated housing. And don't even mention the countryside. Just go a mile from the neon on the Bund and Nanjing Road and you will find thousands of people living on $40 per month, severance pay from their former factory jobs at now-defunct factories. They have no health insurance, and if they become really sick, all they can do is go home and die.
Sections of the big department store are permanently empty, as are many of the new office blocks and shopping malls, built as a result of corrupt deals, giving a veneer affluence that makes the city look more prosperous than it is. For every member of the emergent middle class who drives her family to Pizza Hut in her new Volkswagen, there are perhaps a hundred who can barely afford a bicycle.
Everything I have just written, from both points of view, is true. It just depends on how you look at it. Is the glass half empty or is it half full? How foreigners see China often has as much to do with their own characters and their own prejudices (or the character and prejudices of the reporter who writes the article or book they read) as it has to do with the reality on the ground. For every fact that is true about China, the opposite is almost always true as well, somewhere in the country...
What do I think? It depends on which day you ask me. China messes with my head on a daily basis. One day I think that it really is going to take over the world, and that the Chinese government is doing the most extraordinary thing the planet has ever witnessed. The World Bank says China has lifted 400 million people out of poverty since 1978. That's more than the entire population of South America.
The next day it will all seem built on sand and I expect it all to come tumbling down around us. I'll be disgusted at the way the Communist Party treats its people, and shocked at the sheer cost it all, the human cost, which seems acceptable to the government in everything it does.
There is an intangible feel in Shanghai, an urgency, a hope and optimism that hangs in the air all around you from the minute you arrive. People are pushing forward, with their feet and in their heads, building a future, building a country, moving towards some distant, unseen goal.
New York City makes a good comparison. Beijing is Washington, DC, a capital city, too obsessed with politics to be at the forefront of commerce. Shanghai is Manhattan, although in many ways it is Manhattan in about 1910- a boomtown with immigrants flooding in. There are roughly 13 million people in Shanghai (New York in 1910 had about 5 million). As in New York a hundred years ago, many of these people have just arrived from somewhere else.
There is no Statue of Liberty to welcome them here, but as I stand looking out across the corrugated river to the Elysian Fields of Pudong, it seems to me there should be. Or at least a Statue of Opportunity...
One shiny new office tower on the other side of the river has become a huge TV screen, with advertisements and government propaganda alternately lighting up the entire side of the building, one message replaces five seconds later by another.
Welcome to Shanghai. Tomorrow will be even more beautiful.
1,746 more days until the Shanghai World Expo.
Sexual equality is a basic policy of our country.
Eat Dove chocolate.
First of all, yes, there is a consumer boom, but the majority of people have no access to it. If in the US you need money to get power, in China you need power to get money. China's prosperity today is just a patina of wealth, accessible mainly to the corrupt and the very fortunate at the top, which disguises a seething mass of urban social problems, such as unemployment, crime and outdated housing. And don't even mention the countryside. Just go a mile from the neon on the Bund and Nanjing Road and you will find thousands of people living on $40 per month, severance pay from their former factory jobs at now-defunct factories. They have no health insurance, and if they become really sick, all they can do is go home and die.
Sections of the big department store are permanently empty, as are many of the new office blocks and shopping malls, built as a result of corrupt deals, giving a veneer affluence that makes the city look more prosperous than it is. For every member of the emergent middle class who drives her family to Pizza Hut in her new Volkswagen, there are perhaps a hundred who can barely afford a bicycle.
Everything I have just written, from both points of view, is true. It just depends on how you look at it. Is the glass half empty or is it half full? How foreigners see China often has as much to do with their own characters and their own prejudices (or the character and prejudices of the reporter who writes the article or book they read) as it has to do with the reality on the ground. For every fact that is true about China, the opposite is almost always true as well, somewhere in the country...
What do I think? It depends on which day you ask me. China messes with my head on a daily basis. One day I think that it really is going to take over the world, and that the Chinese government is doing the most extraordinary thing the planet has ever witnessed. The World Bank says China has lifted 400 million people out of poverty since 1978. That's more than the entire population of South America.
The next day it will all seem built on sand and I expect it all to come tumbling down around us. I'll be disgusted at the way the Communist Party treats its people, and shocked at the sheer cost it all, the human cost, which seems acceptable to the government in everything it does.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Just thought I should post something
So it has been two weeks or so since I have posted anything, mainly because life here seems like it has been a bit crazy. Not so much crazy in a bad way, but just busy. I remember when I was in school teachers always seemed a bit all over the place at the end of the year, and that is how I feel. The good news is that things are coming to a very nice end. I am having a good time both socially and at work, so it makes life fun. I have been able to play more soccer and volleyball and have been loving it. I just finished my last credential course (minus my student teaching) and my reports and being checked as I type.
Last weekend my class had a class BBQ at one of the family's house and it was good fun. I realize how much I like the students and parents in my class and that I have been lucky to have such a good group. Surprisingly it was good to be able to talk to parents outside of a work setting. I am going to miss my little kids and I think I might try to make the conversion to teach Primary School when I get back. The little ones have grown on me.
Hmmm... what other updates are there? I guess here is the breakdown of my time in China:
Last weekend my class had a class BBQ at one of the family's house and it was good fun. I realize how much I like the students and parents in my class and that I have been lucky to have such a good group. Surprisingly it was good to be able to talk to parents outside of a work setting. I am going to miss my little kids and I think I might try to make the conversion to teach Primary School when I get back. The little ones have grown on me.
Hmmm... what other updates are there? I guess here is the breakdown of my time in China:
- 3 weeks left of school (13 1/2 days to be exact)
- 4 weeks till my cousin Ryan comes to visit. We may go to Sichuan province, but not sure b/c of the earthquake.
- 49 days till I am back in San Diego
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